Si vis pacem, para bellum

Britain cutting the soul out of its Army?

From The Telegraph (available here), comes a story about how British Army units who have traditionally drawn much of their manpower from foreign and Commonwealth countries are likely to be decommissioned (a nice way of saying these units will no longer exist).

In my opinion, this is about as stupid a decision as the British government could have ever reached. I know economic times are bad, I know the British government needs to slash government spending, but cutting these units (or amalgamating them with other units) is tantamount in many cases to some very historic and storied units losing their identities altogether.

For instance, one of the units in the list of proposed cuts comes from the Royal Highland Fusiliers. The Royal Highland Fusiliers is already an amalgamation of the Royal Scots Fusiliers and the Highland Light Infantry. The Royal Scots Fusiliers has won over 200 battle honours in its history; it has fought against Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kruger, George Washington, The Kaiser, Hitler, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the IRA, the United States, various natives of Africa and Asia and Saddam Hussein. Losing such a heritage is like cutting the soul out of an armed forces that has thrived on this kind of heritage.

Another unit that is threatened with the axe is the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, with the proposal that this unit be merged with 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards (aka The Welsh Cavalry). The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, however, is already an amalgamation of other older units, one of whom, the Royal Scots Greys, is the oldest surviving cavalry Regiment of the Line in the British Army. The component units that merged to form the Royal Scots combined have won 3 Victoria Crosses.

The proposed mergers and cuts will dilute further this kind of regimental heritage. And this kind of history and heritage is something that contains a value that is far beyond any money. Heritage of this kind confers upon the unit a moral force (and Clausewitz argued that moral force is three times more powerful than material force). It makes soldiers proud to know that they are joining a regiment with this kind of heritage, and this heritage serves as a rallying point, a source of great motivation, for new recruits to want to maintain the traditions and battle heritage of their regiment.

Do they (the British government) know what they are potentially losing???